For Mike and Holly Mannion, the tumbledown cottage in a quiet country village seemed the ideal retreat from the rat race. But when a team of contractors is hired to drill a water-well, a deadly plague is unleashed – a macabre, terrifying entity that had lurked in the bowels of the earth for centuries. The Festering Death had risen from its burial place …

In the village of Hopwas, there is a barbed wire fence around the old reservoir--but it's not meant to keep something out, it's meant to keep some things in. Now, a wealthy man is being driven mad by a terrifying vision. A drowned corpse is found in a dry, empty field. Suddenly, a child is gone. And something even more horrific is waiting to be unleashed.